Hilary Benn is very serious about his power grab and has been laying the ground for it very carefully. On 18 November BICOM – the British Israeli Communications and Research Centre – published this:
Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn told a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) lunch yesterday that relations with Israel must be based on cooperation and rejected attempts to isolate the country.
Addressing senior party figures in Westminster, Benn praised Israel for its “progressive spirit, vibrant democracy, strong welfare state, thriving free press and independent judiciary.” He also called Israel “an economic giant, a high-tech centre, second only to the United States. A land of innovation and entrepreneurship, venture capital and graduates, private and public enterprise.”
Consequently, said Benn, “Our future relations must be built on cooperation and engagement, not isolation of Israel. We must take on those who seek to delegitimise the state of Israel or question its right to exist.”
It is worth reading the next article BICOM published. Brigadier General Michael Herzog, head of strategy for the Israeli defence Force, sets out a strategy for Israeli interests in Syria which dovetails precisely with what Benn and Cameron were pushing in the Commons. Note that Herzog says an overall diplomatic solution is not realistic and rather de facto partitioning of Syria suits Israel’s interests. Therefore there should be no waiting for diplomatic progress before western military action.
With his abandonment of any pretended concern for the slow and agonising genocide of the Palestinians, and his strident support for Trident, Benn is embracing the Israeli establishment and the British military and political establishment. In return, the Tories roared his speech to the rafters, while the media, and especially the Genie Energy linked media, are boosting him to the Labour leadership.
The United Kingdom has, temporarily, an opposition leadership which is not controlled, Zionist, neo-con and in the pocket of the arms industry. Benn has positioned himself very carefully to offer himself as the vehicle for the entire establishment to move to correct this aberration.
No Like Father Like Son.
Tam Dalyell’s obituary of Tony Benn.
In 1943, he joined the RAF. Flying training took place at Bulawayo in what was then Southern Rhodesia. Ever curious about his surroundings, Benn became friendly with an old Matabele warrior who had fought against Cecil Rhodes. He went to the local hospital for Africans, and found the conditions appalling. He was amazed to find 60,000 white people in total control, living off the land that had been stolen by Rhodes from the Matabele and the Mashona. It was this experience which ignited Benn’s interest in the anti-colonial movements, leading to friendship with Fenner Brockway and others in the Movement for Colonial Freedom, which became one of Benn’s central interests after he was elected to Parliament for Bristol South-East.
Benn’s diaries for 1940 to 1962, published as Years of Hope (1994), record his life in Africa, his training as a pilot, the shattering effect of the death of his brother Michael while he was there, his journey on to Egypt, where his war ended after he had got his wings. He transferred to the Fleet Air Arm with the hope of serving in the Far East: Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to that plan. But I noticed that Benn was never as vocal about the evil of nuclear weapons as some of his colleagues in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
/..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/politician-who-embodied-the-soul-of-the-labour-party-and-came-to-be-admired-even-by-his-rivals-9192333.html
For Southern Rhodesia read Israel.
It is a British thing as I said before!
The simple fact that you are supporting the zionist scum and waxing lyrical;
which evidently is only your god given right, because the rest of us are;
Hence disagreement with the zionist scum imperatives’ is verboten.
Last night’s shameful dog and pony show in HoC has been the culmination of countless council tenants losing benefits because they had an extra cupboard classed as a bedroom. Thousands of unemployed people going hungry because they have been sanctioned based on a whim of a tosser at the other end of the phone whom only gives out his/her first name and no second name or position or even a reference No. has decided these people could find a job and work!! Which job and where is never the question.
Our “open government” is now so open that every pissant contractor’s name is an “official secret” and our police are brutal thugs all because of the zionist supremacist vermin, while this morning only quarter of million pounds has been pissed away on Syria to bounce rubble just for laughs and spreading “democracy” and …….
It is no accident that the likes of you are so intent on countering the
As any slight danger of spoiling the free ride or end of the gravy train is indeed an existential threat to a bunch of freeloading swine whom have come to take for granted the free money and distorted UK foreign policy as part of their patrimony too!
Ah yes, “disenfranchised”.
A bit like Craig’s “outraged” Muslims on 7/7.
Many of us are outraged, Glenn. Many of us are disenfranchised. But we do not blow ourselves up in public places.
The left just can’t bring themselves to criticise Islam, with its appalling daily death toll. They are far more comfortable attacking the advanced, successful and democratic state of Israel, because really they just hate success.
As far as I can recall, most the criticism that I have heard of Wahhabism has come from people on the left.
I listened to Benn’s speech, it did nothing for me, just another slimy politicians empty words. Any idiot can make us agree that ISIS are a bad thing.
It’s the solution that requires some real intelligence. A few bombs on a refinery is actually counterproductive. When that area is cleared of ISIS they will need that destroyed infrastructure to provide money to rebuild Syria. Much better striking the tankers leaving the refinery, they’d give up on using it soon after, and perhaps not destroy it.
The elephant in the room regarding Syria is that there are only about 4 significant players, the Syrian army, the Kurds, Al Nusra, and ISIS , five if you include the FSA. The only vaguely ‘moderate’ ones are the the Syrian army and the Kurds (imo).
Therein lies the problem, too many powerful Sunni inclined players find that unacceptable, so a long war looks likely. I just hope Russia/Saudi/US can hammer out a deal, perhaps partitioning the country into three, Kurds, Sunni ‘moderate’ head choppers, and ‘Assad’s Syria’.
Is the insistence on criticism of all of Islam due to the fact that criticizing Wahhabism (along with its Salafist derivative) doesn’t include Shiites and most Palestinians?
Lysias
Islamic fanaticism is as old as the hills. The only reason you take an interest in Saudi Wahhabism is because you think you can then pin the blame for all Islamic extremism on,
– yup, you guessed it – the West.
I don’t know how rich Benn is but rich enough not to take money from Oxfam in order to visit Syrian refugees in a Jordan camp. Nor to employ his wife as his parliamentary assistant, ie we pay her.
He also took donations from these:
8 October 2008
4. Sponsorship or financial or material support
•Donations to my campaign for election as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party received from:
•Lord Mitchell (personal donation)
•R A Nelson, of London (personal donation)
•Leonard Collinson, of Formby (personal donation)
•David Abrahams, of Newcastle (personal donation)
•Sir Sigmund Sternberg, of London (personal donation
•Donation in kind from the Co-operative Party
•(Registered 17 September 2007)
Amounts unspecified.
Abrahams Donorgate. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/1570859/Hunt-for-mystery-benefactor-in-Gordon-Browns-donations-scandal.html
‘
Gordon Brown has ordered an investigation into the finances of the property developer who gave Labour illegal donations of more than £670,000. Fears are growing within the party that David Abrahams, who hid his identity by using four intermediaries, may himself have been a conduit for another mystery benefactor, after senior Labour figures questioned his personal wealth.
Sternberg/ British Board of Jewish Deputies/Labour party donor
http://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/leadership/sir-sigmund-sternberg.html
‘…co-ordinator of the religious component of the World Economic Forum.’?? that’s a new one.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=10669
Fedup,
You rather went off the deep end with your reply, though it was amusing. Still at at a lost to see the relevance of the comment ‘its a British thing’.
By refusing to accept that others are permitted to disagree, and indeed went to considerable lengths to conflate a number of issues in an effort to distort my posts, proves the point I made earlier. You simply can’t accept a counter argument or rather a contrasting position. Full marks for use of the word verboten when discussing Isreal.
I would very much like to see where I stated I was a Zionist or are so intellectually bankrupt that if one doesn’t agree with your ( Mary et al ) opinions then they must be a Zionist? There is such a thing as a nuanced view, although I realise that icon pet is beyond the grasp of many who comment here.
The same democratic and advanced bunch whom blew up King David’s hotel the British administrative headquarters for Palestine killing 91 people and leaving 46 maimed! The same far advanced zionistan that the beebeecee reporter talking to the female whom reconnoitred the joint for the bombers to place their bombs in the “right, and correct columns” got an answer. In response to the reporter’s question the female, told us all; “I have never regretted my part in the bombing to this date”!
The very selective memories of the zionist vermin in conjunction with “Islam is a religion” and “Judaism is not a religion but a race” is beyond contempt!!!
Benn, hear, hear! “We must take on those who seek to delegitimise the state of Israel or question its right to exist.”
Spot on. And the way to do it is to take those delegitimising crimes against humanity off the table. Throw a few virgins into the volcano. Israel will have demonstrated its responsible sovereignty, as the US did by purging Nixon at the height of the secret-bombing furor. You don’t have to go through with prosecution – the merest nod to culpability in serious crimes will do. Ruin and disgrace is sufficient. Take the pressure right off.
You can start with Amiram Levin for the shelling of the Qana UN compound. He’s a has-been.
Good points Fredi, I agree with paras 2,3 and 4. The problem is Turkey will never allow a Kurdish state, or an expansion of the de facto Kurdish state in Iraq. Turkey need dragged to the table on that, which will require the EU (Germany, France) plus the US through NATO using the levers at their control. Can’t see it though.
I’m under heavy moderation at the moment so will have to leave it here. Keep kidding yourselves.
Has anyone actually read the Balfour Declaration? Here it is:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/balfour.html
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours,
Arthur James Balfour
You can vote. It is a 90% No at the moment.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/could-hilary-benn-saviour-labour-6945915
So the Israel-defender doesn’t like criticism of Wahhabism either. I wonder why that is.
“I listened to Benn’s speech, it did nothing for me, just another slimy politicians empty words. Any idiot can make us agree that ISIS are a bad thing”
__________________
That’s it Fredi like Anon1 lying over RoP (no links provided), Benn and his weasel war hawk buddies would’ve said just about anything to, win the vote to bomb Syria.
Westminster has been comprised, and shown for what it is, a mainly right wing neocon war machine.
Even former Republican candidate for US president, John McCain said any British involvement in Syria would be “token”at best.
Speaking to the BBC the Senator for Arizona “We have some British aircraft drop some bombs we say thank you very much.”
McCain continued “It’s all in the aid of Obama so he can say ah now we have the British helping us.”
Anon1
Do you condemn state discrimination against Israeli Arabs or are you a racist?
“I’m under heavy moderation at the moment so will have to leave it here. Keep kidding yourselves.”
__________________
More like you’ve spouted your fill of heavy BS.
I recall only too well the shock I felt during the emergency debate on the Falkland Islands invasion in 1982. Brits, I came to understand, hated diplomacy and simply loved war and kicking the shit out of smaller or poorer nations. It is, I suspect, a consequence of a mighty post-imperial hang-up that’s going to hang around for some time yet.
Fellow scribblers, our simple minds do not penetrate the depths of sheer evil, sheer greed or sheer selfishness that political Islam or political neo-sean-connery go. The doctrines of Abdul Wahab are not the same as the doctrines of the grubby greed of Al Qaida any more than the doctrines of Adam Smith inform the grubby greed of Tories and Blairites.
Allow these 2 political groups who are in coalition together, their long narcissistic gaze at what they believe they have achieved together. Neo-cons believe that they have re-couped their gambling debts through interest based banking fraud by sucking up to oil bandits in Arabia, and political Islam believes that it has acquired territory by conquest, autonomy and government which they have never possessed before.
Allow them their pin-up boys Sean Connery as Bond and Israeli Simon Elliot as Baghdadi.
If the Neo-cons think that they can empower terrorism in exchange for petro dollars without, as Jeremy Corbyn sagely says, no consequences on our own civilisation, is totally ridiculous.
Similarly, if political Islam thinks that it can usurp the meaning of Islam, usurp the territory of faithful Muslims, and pursue a strategy of racist contempt for any other adherents to Islam, they have deceived themselves far from the faith of Islam.
Have neo-cons repented by the 1980 world banking crash? Has Saudi Arabia repented from its ceaseless stream of terror in Pakistan, Afghanistan Libya Iraq and Syria?
A Benn worthy of his father’s honoured name would have addressed his war-like threats against these targets. Hillary Benn’s speech was displayed a deep ignorance of his father’s deep intelligence.
The Benn passion was expended on the trivial aspiration for personal influence and power.
During those grim days in 1982, one event stands out for its nobility – an anti-war meeting held in Methodist Hall, Westminster. Among the speakers were Tam Dalyell and a certain Tony Benn.
“Do you think it’s revenge because his dad gave him a girl’s name?”
You took the words out of my mouth!
But it is also “killing” the resented parent symbolically. In just the same way Dan Hodges (currently lauding Benn as a future PM, as you would have guessed) systematically rubbishes his mother’s political beliefs. Some children seem to feel a need to murder their own parents in order to assert their identities; it’s one of the more contorted and Laocoonian knots that emotion ties itself up in as it avoids admitting someone superficially loved is also profoundly hated.
Would that be Hilary Wedgwood Benn one of the Stansgate boys? A natural Tory.
Benn/Dalyell both titled or formerly titled aristos. Strange heros.
Speaking of Wahhabism, the San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet his prospective wife, a Pakistani woman who had been living in Saudi for years. He went back to California with her, and they married. Some months later, they committed this mass murder.
The queen bee as well she’s a right anti-war leftie. All Benn Snr had or did was rhetoric.
@ Fredi
‘just hope Russia/Saudi/US can hammer out a deal, perhaps partitioning the country into three, Kurds, Sunni ‘moderate’ head choppers, and ‘Assad’s Syria’.
That is the Israel Odid Yinon plan, to fragment the surrounding secular Arab states and prevent the possibility of a superior Sovereign force arising with the ability to destroy Israel.
Iraq to be split into Kurdistan, Shiastan and Sunnistan
Syria the same division.
The choice pieces to be picked off by Israel in time , for their resources of Oil and water. Golan Heights already illegally annexed by Israel.
Benn is clearly an intelligent man, and very well-connected. It is thus clear to me that he simply can’t believe what he said in his speech. If a lowly poster on the internet like myself knows that ISIL are funded by the Saudi’s and tolerated\encouraged by Nato powers for geopolitical reasons (oil), then it is logical to assume that a clever guy like Benn knows this too, and in much greater detail. And yet he used his oratory to promote another stupid war in the middle east. Why, one wonders, would he do that? This goes to motive, and clearly I don’t know. But a man using a speech to promote a cause he knows is false is a troubling thing. He can’t hide behind ignorance or stupidity, for he is no fool, so the only conclusion to be reached is that he is beign cynically diengenous. On a normal policy matter, this might just be excused as politics. On the central matter of killing people, there is no excuse.
I found it interesting that the case made for war was often a ‘moral’ one. Morality is a tricksy beast, is it not? I am reminded of Blair’s comment during his Iraq speech: “I will not be party to that,” he said, indicating he would resign if he didn’t get his war. They seek to make us doubt our very moral stance, to cast this war as somehow a war of emancipation, a civil war freeing the slaves – but it’s not. It’s about oil, and neocons, and the stupid rapture, and all sorts of bullshit. It isn’t about freedom, for sure.
Dalyell/Benn titles were inherited but their anti-war views were a matter of choice.